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One of the landing legs didn’t latch… baby fall down… go BOOOM!
That’s one expensive firecracker 
That reminded me of the lunar lander arcade game, insert another token!
That’s why the passengers fasten their seat belts.
Oh man. Such an impressive landing, ruined by the simplest of failures
I talked to a guy that worked for Space-X. He mentioned that once they manage to land one on the barge, they will send in a crew to weld the thing to the deck before it can fall over (and hopefully after all the LOX has boiled off or is dumped… I wouldn’t want to be on deck if it tipped over while they were welding). There were 15’ seas at landing time.
Why not just land on an island or something?
They’re testing those about 10 miles from my house. We hear rumbling from their rockets all hours of the day and night.
Followed by a short silence and then…… BOOOOOM!!!
We heard the rumblings about 30 min to an hour ago, approx a 2 minute test sequence. Must not have happened here, our site is going strong.
I’ve been hearing the same rumbles. Heard one tonight at 9:40 PM. We’ve heard them at work also. I asked a buddy of mine who used to work there if they tested rockets on a specific day and he said they hadn’t tested in several weeks. I was told the noise might be from the local rail yard. I don’t know.
Steve
They’ve been test firing those things a lot lately. They rattle the windows in our house. My dad is about deaf and he goes outside looking to see if he can see what all the racket is.
9:40 would have been about right for the one we heard last. It was sorta mild, by comparison to some they test.
There seems to be no rhyme or reason as to their testing time frame. Late night, early morning, daytime, whenever they have one to test… they test it, whatever the hour. I feel for the folks in Moody and McGregor, must be horrible over there!
Their test site is in McGregor, Texas outside of Waco… about 7 miles from George Bush’s ranch. It used to be owned by Beal Aerospace. Before that it was a Rocketdyne plant.
We used to fly rockets there. Not a good place to fly. One side of our space had power lines. The other side had the “death zone”. It was fenced off with razor wire. It had lots of unexploded WWII munitions buried along with barrels of beryllium scrap. If a rocket landed in the death zone, it stayed there forever.
When we were flying there, we had our own Secret Service agent to coordinate launches with… wouldn’t be prudent to rain rockets on W. As far as dealing with the government goes, they were a pleasure to work with. Very professional an knowledgeable. Even when all the local air space was closed when W was in town, we got waivers to fly.
I’ve been waiting for them to release the video.
Landing looks great! Until it started to tip due to that damn leg, of course. People were speculating that the rough ocean conditions contributed, despite that fact that Musk said it was just the leg’s failure to lock.
How much money it cost?
Anyone for a group buy :)?
Zero.
It was paid for by the NASA / NOAA / CNES satellite it launched before attempting this test landing. Each time SpaceX launches they attempt a landing. They have already successfully landed on solid land. First time ever for anyone. Normally these rockets are lost, considered expendable, by landing it they will be able to reuse it and massively reduce the cost of launches.
Actually SpaceX has already been offering the lowest price. Others have been scrambling to reduce their costs so that they can compete.
There is a much longer explanation that was written by Musk I believe. But it came down to that it requires more fuel to land on land due to distances from where it ends up in low orbit. And the same probably goes for any island near any launch facilities.
McGregor is some 20 miles from Waco, with another town in between. Crawford is the town North of McGregor, while the test site is South West of town. Our Seville was totalled on Hwy 317 by a woman going home from work from over there. She pulled right out in front of us crossing the highway while we were going 70 mph. And that highway now sports a 75mph speed limit.
The suggestion that launching in fog might have let ice form on the landing leg is interesting.
I wonder if they could ‘exercise’ the landing legs while at the edge of space to knock loose any ice and get a positive lock signal — but I’d guess they’re one-time hardware meant to only deploy once and lock in place.
Interesting that the failed leg almost immediately went sideways, rather than folding back up into its stored position.
Both shuttles lost were also due to cold conditions — one overstiff O-ring leaking flame from a solid booster, and one chunk of ice falling off the external tank punching a hole in a leading edge.